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Musical DS jammed finger. What to do?


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Help! He was playing ball and jammed his pinkie finger enough for it to swell from the knuckle down. He's in a fair bit of pain, but it has improved since yesterday. We buddy wrapped the finger and gave him ice. Even if the finger is broken, don't they just wrap it and tell you to be careful? I don't want to impair his piano and guitar playing in the future, so is there something else I should be doing? We can get x-rays if necessary, I just hate to do it needlessly.

 

Kelly

 

:bigear:

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They actually will splint it now, and then when it has healed will buddy tape it. At least that is what they did with my daughter's broken finger. With growth plates and such I would get it checked, personally. When my son broke his finger I had lots of adult men tell me it was pointless to take him to the doctor, that they broke their fingers and it was fine without a doctor. Then they would put their hand out and it was obvious which was the broken finger because it was knobby or crooked. Um...yeah...that is exactly WHY I took him to the doctor. I don't want his finger to look like that!

 

Oh and go to an ortho, not the regular ER, unless your ER is a big hospital with radiologists on staff at the time. We tried the regular ER and the ER doctors said it wasn't broken. An ortho looked at the xrays they took and said it definitely was. The break was obvious even to me, a veterinary technician. My ped said I should always go to the ortho or a hospital with radiologists....oops.

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Well, I don't know what level of musical accomplishment your child wants to pursue, but if it is a high level of playing, then I would suggest getting it x-rayed.

 

I was a professional pianist by trade before the full-time homeschooling and as such, I've seen players that ended up out of the profession for refusing to get injured fingers looked at. One has to be extremely careful if there is injury to a joint or growth plate...you can end up with a finger/arm/wrist that doesn't grow properly because it didn't repair properly or even worse, a fused joint! NOT FUN!

 

I know it is a pain. I had a bad injury to a finger during my middle school years and my mom's philosophy was, "it's just a jam and it will heal on it's own", my dad's philosophy was, "She's going to be a virtuoso if we take care of her fingers, and angry with us forever if we don't." Guess who got an x-ray and had a fracture that was unaligned and would have caused me to lose almost all range of motion in that finger....bye, bye musical career.

 

Hey dad, Thanks for taking care of my hand! :001_smile:

 

Faith

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Tell him "Don't make us come over there!!!" 8)

 

Really, I feel so bad every time I think that if I had gone to a surgeon instead of our ped my dd would have movement in that joint. Makes me sick.

 

Tell him, "Don't Poke the HIVE!"

 

Remudamom, I think we may need a posse here!

 

Hmmmm....I don't know what to tell you other than do a lot of icing and give him ibuprofen regularly to reduce swelling.

 

DD is an accomplished classical pianist and ds #1 is beginning classical/Flemenco guitar so I can say that I would definitely be inclined to get an x-ray, but I know that probably isn't going to help you sway your dh on the matter.

 

The last time my dh was adamant that one of the ds's did not need an x-ray, I kind of mamma beared right over top of him and went in anyway....very, very unusual for us! I'm glad I did...he had a dislocation.

 

Faith

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This is your child's hand you are talking about. Even if he wasn't an accomplished musician, he will probably want full use of his hands for the rest of his life. Tell your DH that your son is still in a lot of pain and that your mommy instincts are screaming at you that something just isn't right. If you just cannot get him to see your POV, you may have to apologize for disagreeing with him, but you are going to take the kid in with or without his blessing.

 

DD has "jammed" her hand and her foot on separate occasions. In both cases we went in immediately as she is a gymnast and pounds on both body parts regularly. Luckily we went in because in both cases she had breaks. Should we have just assumed she broke her toe and buddy taped them, we could have caused long term damage as it was a growth plate further up that had actually fractured because of the impact and not the toe. Buddy taping in that situation would have caused it to heal incorrectly. We lucked out with the finger being a simple break and it was easy for the ortho to set and splint correctly. One of her friends was not as lucky and had to go back twice to have hers reset and eventually they had to do a cast for a month so it would heal correctly.

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